for sustainability in Maine’s fishing industry

Beyond a Good Catch

Innovation and Advocacy for Sustainability in Maine’s Fishing Industry

Written by Craig Pendleton, retired Maine fisherman and former director of the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance

IN MAINE, commercial fishing has been a way of life for generations. It is dangerous. It is not for everyone. I remember back in my early days when older guys would compare it to a priest receiving a calling from a higher place. That’s how we all felt about going to sea to reap its bounty.

Commercial fishing has taken its fair share of criticism, much of it warranted, some of it not. Management of marine resources is an inexact science. There are many assumptions when trying to manage a population of fish and other marine species that live underwater across tens of thousands of acres. Add in that we border another country, Canada, that uses an entirely different management system and that the fish don’t know that there is an international border — you get the picture.

I’ll focus on a few positive initiatives that I believe made a significant difference for the fish and the fishermen. The first is “by-catch.” This is when fishermen catch non-targeted, unmarketable species in fishing gear. In my 40 year career of dragging we got better and better at catching fish but didn’t see the big picture.

Mesh size, the size of the opening of the twine that nets were made of, was set in stone as one generation taught the next. When I started, mesh size in the “cod end,” where the catch collected in the net, was three inches. I never questioned it. My job was to catch as many fish as I could, as fast as I could, to make as much money as I could and then turn around and do it again. However, there were times when fishermen would throw as much back as they kept. Sorting these fish took time and energy and impacted the quality although at the time we weren’t focused on a quality product — we just needed to catch a lot.

I remember hearing that fishermen in southern New England tried using 4¾inch mesh to sort out small yellowtail flounder. We were focused on catching grey sole and were seeing thousands of small unmarketable fish in our nets. I asked my employer at that time to purchase some of the 4¾-inch twine to try. I was told I would never catch enough fish with that size twine and they refused to buy it for me. I drove to Rhode Island and bought it myself. It made more sense to me to filter the fish underwater instead of bringing it up dead and throwing it overboard.

By the end of my career, I advocated for the use of 6-inch mesh and much of the front ends of our nets were made out of 8-inch mesh to further aid in the selection process.

A second innovation to reduce “bycatch” was introduced into the northern shrimp fishery. This winter fishery was an outstanding source of revenue, the market was huge and we shipped them all over the world, but once again the mesh

size of the netting was important as our shrimp, Pandalus borealis, were small.

Once again, the fortunate/unfortunate situation for us was that the shrimp lived amongst the other 18 marketable species in the Gulf of Maine. It was claimed by scientists and environmentalists that the shrimp fishery interacted with 19 million pounds of by-catch per year. Management’s answer was to put very low limits on how many fish we could land with our shrimp. It was a terrible decision that did not get to the root of the problem. We needed to find a way to sort the fish out of the net and only keep the shrimp.

In the southern United States fishermen were dealing with how to keep sea turtles out of their nets. The solution came in the form of a grate installed within the net with a hole in the top above the grate that allowed the fish to be sorted and released. This Nordmore Grate system was introduced with little direction, little science and little enthusiasm by us. Sometimes we fishermen would only buy into change if we were beat over the head with it. Such was the case with the grate.

Those of us who could get past the railroading of this tool through the system quickly saw that 1) our crew wasn’t out on deck all day sorting fish out of the shrimp and 2) our product was significantly better because it wasn’t getting squished by all the fish. We quickly began getting paid more for our product and that made us happy. We still hated the grate but we would learn to love it.

The final piece of the puzzle was to win back the public. We made great strides with by-catch and needed to shift gears and focus on producing a quality product. The Portland Fish Exchange was one positive experiment that headed us in the right direction. It was designed as a full display, English outcry auction system. Your fish, identified under your boat name, would be placed on display for buyers to inspect and purchase through the auctioning system.

We all had our doubts and while I was a critic early on, I became one its greatest supporters and served on the board of directors for about eight years. I firmly believe that my business benefited from taking more time to carefully clean the fish, ice it properly, and get it home quickly — it gave us a first class product. We still weren’t organized enough. We couldn’t collectively see the bigger picture of winning back the public and

using our stories and first-class product to make the next step. We needed to fish smarter not harder. The days of filling the boat and making money from sheer volume were long gone. We had to focus on the strength of our long heritage and our successes in reducing by-catch and bringing fishing to a sustainable level.

I dreamed of partnering with farmers across the country to market a healthy plate of food. I spent three years working with several bright, innovative people from diverse backgrounds to create an organization we felt would be the catalyst to make this dream happen. Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance (NAMA) gave many of us hope. Unfortunately, we did not win back the public. Fisheries management was a disaster and fish stocks continued to plummet. The shrimp fishery has been closed for nearly six years now.

Management decided to go down the path of quota management and in turn, rewarded the people who caught the most instead of recognizing how differently we all fished. NAMA had to

I DREAMED OF PARTNERING WITH FARMERS ACROSS THE COUNTRY TO MARKET A HEALTHY

PLATE OF FOOD.

Putting People First. Not Profit.

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become an advocacy group and fight for access to the marine resources for its members. It was unfortunate and derailed our long-term focus. I still firmly believe we were on the right path. We did connect with farming organizations and we did write comprehensive fishery management plans that rewarded people for conservation. It is work I am extremely proud of and continue to promote.

I ended my commercial fishing career in 2008. While I no longer own a fishing business, the passion of going to sea and fighting for what is right has never left me. I was lucky and proud to land a job leading a local chamber of commerce for over eight years and to serve on the state chamber board for many of those years. It served as an outlet for my passion and my love for advocacy. The people that lead chambers are a special breed. I am honored to have served with them and I cherished every moment I could spend with them.